Christmas in Scotia, NY

I meant to update my blog during the holidays – silly me, I thought I would have spare time during my two weeks of vacation! However, I was fully occupied with enjoying the time I could spend with my family and of course with my fiancé and his mom. It was the first Christmas that Matt and I had ever celebrated together, and also the first time that my family had met anyone from his family. Matt waited for me to come back from Paris to go shopping for decorations, only to find out that the stock of decorations in the stores had dwindled, few trees were left for sale, and that even finding lights for the tree was difficult! Of course, it was worth the trouble and a nice memory, since the tree was, in the end, beautiful.

My lovely stand mixer and I spent some quality time together over cookie dough, even though my Christmas Eve search for the ice cream maker attachment was unsuccessful. Here are some of the cookies my family decorated: frosted sour cream cookies (made with lard!), unfrosted sugar cookies, and my favorite peanut butter cookies with chocolate kisses. Cookie consumption was at very high levels this week.


Although there were terrible snowstorms out west, the weather in Scotia was mild and rainy. Since I have spent the last 10 Christmas holidays in Florida and because of course Paris has little hope of seeing snow this winter, I was disappointed to miss what I considered to be my only chance to play in the snow. A few days after Christmas, we did get a little, which was beautiful while it lasted (about 36 hours). Sunday morning, I took a little walk around Scotia, and ended up following some squirrel tracks down to the Mohawk river.

Truffes au Chocolat et Piment d'Espelette

In my last post, I talked about truffles, as in tuber melanosporum and tuber incinatum, but here I'm talking about the truffle which only sort of looks like a truffle and is not nearly so rare, though occasionally just as expensive. Before my cooking class this weekend, it had not actually occurred to me that the dusting of cocoa powder on a chocolate truffle is supposed to mimic dirt.
Anyway, inspired by a dessert I got a nibble of when I went for cassoulet with La Petite Americaine a few weeks back, I decided to investigate the combination of chocolate with Piment d'Espelette, the only spice to be given is own controlled appellation of origin, similar to the designations for wines like Champagne and Bordeaux or cheeses like Roquefort and Brie de Meaux, which must follow rigorous preparation guidelines in order to maintain their identity. Piment d'Espelette is a spicy red pepper, but only in French terms of spiciness, rating a 4 out of 10 on the Scoville index of heat, with a warm, sweet aroma. The pepper is named after the town of Espelette, or Ezpeleta, in the Basque region along the border of Spain and France. It was originally brought to Spain by explorers returning from the New World 400 years ago, so it's fitting that it should be paired with chocolate, another gift from the New World. In Basque cooking, it is added to stews, omelettes, and sauces and also rubbed on roasted meats.
I added the ground pepper to the ganache for the truffles and then finished with barely a sprinkle of it on top of the truffles after dusting them with cocoa powder. I had never made truffles before, but found the recipe involving piment d'Espelette on a French health website, so I figured it was worth the trouble, since it was health food and all. The pepper is not really discernable at first bite, but if you let the chocolate stay on your tongue and melt, there is a delicious lingering warmth. I'll report back later on the reactions of mes amis francais!

Happy Thanksgiving!

American Thanksgiving doesn't really enter into the French consciousness at all, but in the spirit of the holiday I did manage to give thanks for all the wonderful people in my life and to also overeat.

For my lab members, I made (for lack of a good pumpkin) Sweet Potato Pie, and for the love of all things nutty, Pecan Pie Bars.

The sweet potato pie was not a real winner with my labmates, but I'd never actually had it and I was amazed to find that it tasted pretty much like pumpkin pie. (Don't worry, it all got eaten) The pecan pie bars, on the other hand, went over really well and if you ask me nicely I might tell you which recipe I used from allrecipes.com.

For my real Thanksgiving meal (not that dessert can't ever be a meal to give thanks for), I went to a cozy restaurant called 'Les Ormes' which had a special menu created by the American chef who heads up the wine study group I go to a couple nights a month. I am used to rich Thanksgiving meals, but this one was really sumptuous. It had all the hearty American elements you'd expect, but in a much more refined way than you get at family dinners were the food comes in huge serving dishes and everything goes on the same plate. Meredith did a great job with the menu, and I'm definitely going back to Les Ormes on a regular night. The restaurant itself has a Michelin star, but its very warm and welcoming, with none of the pretension I had expected to come with the prestige. The host and hostess were kindly attentive and helped out with a nice wine selection of a premier cru nuit-st-georges from 1999.

Without further ado, the menu:
She-Crab Soup
Pumpkin Soufflé
Roast Turkey with Gravy, Cranberry Sauce, and Oyster Corbread Stuffing
Dessert Bites
Pecan Pie and Potimarron Ice Cream

Recettes Faciles

For my birthday, my labmates bought me a gift, much to my surprise: a cookbook of basic French home cuisine, Recettes Faciles by Francoise Bernard. There aren't that many pictures, but there are hundreds of recipes ranging from boeuf bourguignon to veloute d'asperges by way of clafoutis and profiteroles au chocolat. The recipes are given alphabetically, but the indexing of the recipes is really useful -- there is an index by ingredient, one by course, indices for dishes that take only 15 minutes or 30 minutes to make, an index of economical dishes, seasonal meal suggestions, wine, food and cheese matching, etcetera. Maybe they're just simplified, easy recipes, but I think the high quality basic ingredients I can get in France by going to the open air market and the small local shops make even a simple dish absolutely satisfying. I'm quite pleased to give Francoise Bernard a seat on my shelf next to Marion Cunningham. Merci beaucoup, MMC!

Toaster Oven Chicken

I know now that I have assimilated to the ranks of urban apartment dwellers.

I cooked an animal weighing less than three pounds.

In a toaster oven.

It was actually pretty good, in a way that only roast chicken and gravy can be.

But I forgot to buy the potatoes for the gravy.

Lac Léman Part 4

How could I spend a weekend in the Alps without eating fondue? Cheese fondue is indeed called Fondue Savoyarde because the cheeses that are the best to use come from that region. Compared to what I have had in Paris, the cheese was more flavorful and there was more pepper in this one --it was definitely more tasty.
  

La Cuisine de la Canicule: Gazpacho

Ordinarily, I am not a gazpacho fan, despite how much fun it is to say the word. I have had only bad, inedible experiences with it until now. Tropicana makes gazpacho you can buy in a carton, and I bought it last week when it was so hot that I had no desire to cook or eat anything above room temperature. It was perfectly refreshing and light. So, for all of my friends on the East coast of the US, if you can't stand the heat, serve your soup cold!